Went for impossible difficulty. So I managed to beat the starting mission on attempt 9 or 11 or something with three troops remaining, woohoo for me, only to have all of them killed immediately on the second mission. It seems that the developers had the "dumb" when designing the game since there are probably grandmas more heavily armed than X-Com soldiers. Rifle+pistol+1grenade and skilles troops i mean please, its like we send housewives to solve nuclear theory or something.

Anyway, i judge the quality of a game by how long it can elude its pattern from me and by the third mission i pretty much know how this game is going to play out. Total disappointment. All the aspects that made the original tactical combat have been pretty much fucked up with ridiculous scripts. For instance, when soldiers panic and there is no alien in sight, 10 out 10 times they will shoot their squad mate in the face. There is no randomization at all. Should one lose their soldiers from the first combat the game becomes nigh unplayable because firstly there is almost no way to gain xp and having lost the skilled soldiers one can be sure that 90% of the shots from the xcom squad will miss and 90% of alien fire will hit. I mean really, wheres the tactics in the tactical combat when the only thing i can do is pray for a lottery win that someone actually hits. It feels like the devs took all the things that failed in UFO:Aftermath and multiplied them into even bigger failure. They should have really paid more attention to the original and what made it the icon it is today. This game is just crap in comparison and wasted money.

Too bad you don't like the game Peltz. Not that I can confirm or deny anything not having played it myself, but maybe starting on impossible wasn't really the best way to go in though. I hear from a lot of people that even 'classic' can be extremely punishing without having gained a feel for the game first, so impossible may be almost...impossible haha!

I can say that normal was challenging at times, as my death counts should probably indicate. I'm in the later stages of the game and it's not so bad anymore, but a single oh-crap can lead to half your squad being picked off. Sorry you don't like the game though.

BTW, I can attest that when squaddies lose their crap, they don't always shoot each other. I had one put a burst of fire into a zombie's face and the rest just froze up and didn't do anything at all. In all cases they actually unfroze after a round or two (usually after my vets killed whatever they flipped out about) and I was able to bring them back into combat.

When soldiers panic they have very simple script. They do the following:

1. Fire: Should the panic incident choose discharging the firearm then - If enemy in sight, shoot enemy. If no enemy in sight, shoot team member. But always shoot.
2. Move: Choose a random tile, move there. Probably ten spaces from the character. Haven't seen larger distances yet.
3. Hunker down: If skill available.

In the old X-Com:

1. Fire. Spin random amount of times. Probably limited to 10 or so. Shoot in random direction. Sometimes don't shoot.
2. Move. Drop Weapons, choose random direction, usually opposite the enemy. Run until out of TU.

Eventually I got bored of the impossible difficulty since keeping team members alive came down to just hiding and ending turns and had no longer any tactics attached to it. I switched to easy difficulty just to bulldozer through the game and be done with it. I can understand if my starting weapons don't do much damage but when a sniper cant hit a target at 50 meters then I call that bullshit. Not to mention that a shot with 25% accuracy is much more likely to hit on lower difficulty. Bah, this game needs to be modded badly for as it is now its a really really bad tactical game.

Also sending out more than one fighter to combat a single UFO results in a glitch that renders the game unplayable or locks the geoscape in some weird view.

My two constant companions, point blank misses and game stopping bugs.

I was fighting this muton inside the ship when it suddenly disappeared and guess where it went. Nice.

Every tactical combat is like a deja vu from the last one. Move pawn forward, spot enemy, snipers take it out, move pawn forwards, spot enemy, snipers take it out. Why are the other classes even in the game. Where are the tactics of tactical combat. This game is just horrible.

Lol. Did Derf log in with the wrong account?

Haha i was actually thinking the same thing Ox

lol! Damn... let's just say you two aren't alone.

I can no longer progress in the game. The enemy at this point is pretty much immortal. The muton elites have 100% accuracy, about three turns in there are 9 of them visible already, there's no where to hide and my Colonel soldiers rock a 35% accuracy. I think the enemy is bugged because there's nothing i can do and there's no where to go. I have tried the last abduction site for 9 times now and this is on easy.

Oh did I mention how I love the "shoot 3 rockets" per mission limit. All the 5 star reviews must have been bought because this game is so broken. Oh yeah on top of that, every hour or two i have to alt tab out of the game and kill it because the game is indefinitely stuck on enemy turn.

thanks for the link, Ox... I may go for that.

Peltz... I'm not sure what's wrong with your game. I finished on normal yesterday. I got stuck on the alien movement thing once, after mind-controlling a muton elite that was in the middle of a bunch of baddies. That was the only time though. I had a few CTDs and some camera problems, but also fairly rare (except in one type of UFO mission there's always a camera issue).

Regarding shoot 3 rockets limit... in normal it's a limit of 1 rocket per person, though you can unlock 2 with upgrades.

The game is far from perfect. I'll probably do a bit of a review at some point. However, I still enjoy it a lot. Of course, my wasn't as bugged up as yours apparently is.

Yeah sounds like your game was bugged to shit more than anything else. The 3-4 people I know who play(ed) Xcom other than you guys all loved it to bits too, so I was surprised. Ah well. Better luck next time.

Still not capable of playing it, so my game review will be a little later. On the bright side, I won't have to suffer as many bugs given a patch or two. I hope.